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81-539: Siniscola ( Italian: [siniˈskɔːla] ; Sardinian : Thiniscòle [θiniˈskɔlɛ] ) is a comune (municipality) in the province of Nuoro in the Italian region Sardinia , located about 160 kilometres (99 mi) northeast of Cagliari and about 45 kilometres (28 mi) northeast of Nuoro . Siniscola borders the following municipalities: Irgoli , Lodè , Lula , Onifai , Orosei , Posada , Torpè . This Sardinia location article

162-414: A Basque precursor have been questioned by some Basque linguists. According to Terracini, suffixes in - /ài/ , - /éi/ , - /òi/ , and - /ùi/ are common to Paleo-Sardinian and northern African languages . Pittau emphasized that this concerns terms originally ending in an accented vowel, with an attached paragogic vowel; the suffix resisted Latinization in some place names, which show a Latin body and

243-497: A paragogic vowel (such as the toponym Bunnànnaru ). Rohlfs, Butler and Craddock add the suffix - /ini/ (such as the toponym Barùmini ) as a unique element of Paleo-Sardinian. Suffixes in / a , e , o , u / + - rr - found a correspondence in north Africa (Terracini), in Iberia (Blasco Ferrer) and in southern Italy and Gascony (Rohlfs), with a closer relationship to Basque (Wagner and Hubschmid). However, these early links to

324-651: A Nuragic suffix . According to Bertoldi, some toponyms ending in - /ài/ and - /asài/ indicated an Anatolian influence. The suffix - /aiko/ , widely used in Iberia and possibly of Celtic origin, and the ethnic suffix in - /itanos/ and - /etanos/ (for example, the Sardinian Sulcitanos ) have also been noted as Paleo-Sardinian elements (Terracini, Ribezzo, Wagner, Hubschmid and Faust). Some linguists, like Max Leopold Wagner (1931), Blasco Ferrer (2009, 2010) and Arregi (2017 ) have attempted to revive

405-466: A city subject to Aragonese repopulation and where, according to Giovanni Francesco Fara ( Ioannes Franciscus Fara / Juanne Frantziscu Fara ), for a time Catalan took over Sardinian as in Alghero , was emblematic, so much so as to later generate idioms such as no scit su catalanu ( ' he does not know Catalan ' ) to indicate a person who could not express themselves "correctly". Alghero

486-544: A high level of political organization, and would manage to only partly supplant the pre-Latin Sardinian languages, including Punic . Although the colonists and negotiatores (businessmen) of strictly Italic descent would later play a relevant role in introducing and spreading Latin to Sardinia, Romanisation proved slow to take hold among the Sardinian natives, whose proximity to the Carthaginian cultural influence

567-534: A knowledge of what other peoples say about them"). The Muslim geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi , who lived in Palermo , Sicily at the court of King Roger II , wrote in his work Kitab Nuzhat al-mushtāq fi'khtirāq al-āfāq ( ' The book of pleasant journeys into faraway lands ' or, simply, ' The book of Roger ') that "Sardinians are ethnically Rūm Afāriqah , like the Berbers ; they shun contacts with all

648-399: A long war between the latter and, to the cry of Helis, Helis , from 1353, the previously allied Judicate of Arborea , in which the Sardinian language was to play the role of an ethnic marker. The war had, among its motives, a never dormant and ancient Arborean political design to establish "a great island nation-state, wholly indigenous" which was assisted by the massive participation of

729-498: A number of traces of the linguistic substratum predating the Roman conquest of the island: several words and especially toponyms stem from Paleo-Sardinian and, to a lesser extent, Phoenician - Punic . These etyma might refer to an early Mediterranean substratum, which reveal close relations with Basque . In addition to the aforementioned substratum, linguists such as Max Leopold Wagner and Benvenuto Aronne Terracini trace much of

810-478: A period of almost five centuries, the Greek language only lent Sardinian a few ritual and formal expressions using Greek structure and, sometimes, the Greek alphabet. Evidence for this is found in the condaghes , the first written documents in Sardinian. From the long Byzantine era there are only a few entries but they already provide a glimpse of the sociolinguistical situation on the island in which, in addition to

891-426: A scant and fragmentary knowledge of their native and once first spoken language, limited in both scope and frequency of use, Sardinian has been classified by UNESCO as "definitely endangered ". In fact, the intergenerational chain of transmission appears to have been broken since at least the 1960s, in such a way that the younger generations, who are predominantly Italian monolinguals, do not identify themselves with

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972-479: A score of expeditions to the island, from which they would get considerable booty and a hefty number of Sardinian slaves, the Arab assailants were in fact each time forcefully driven back and would never manage to conquer and settle on the island. Although the surviving texts come from such disparate areas as the north and the south of the island, Sardinian then presented itself in a rather homogeneous form: even though

1053-686: A script that had long fallen out of use on the European continent and F. Casula believes may have been adopted by the Sardinians of Latin culture as their own "national script" from the 8th until the 12th century, prior to their receiving outside influence from the arrival of mainly Italian notaries. Old Sardinian had a greater number of archaisms and Latinisms than the present language does, with few Germanic words, mostly coming from Latin itself, and even fewer Arabisms, which had been imported by scribes from Iberia; in spite of their best efforts with

1134-614: A series of colonizing newcomers: before the Middle Ages , the island was for a time a Byzantine possession ; then, after a significant period of self-rule with the Judicates , when Sardinian was officially employed in accordance with documentary testimonies, it came during the late Middle Ages into the Iberian sphere of influence , during which Catalan and Castilian became the island's prestige languages and would remain so well into

1215-526: A theoretical connection with Basque by linking words such as Sardinian idile ' marshland ' and Basque itil ' puddle ' ; Sardinian ospile ' fresh grazing for cattle ' and Basque hozpil ' cool, fresh ' ; Sardinian arrotzeri ' vagabond ' and Basque arrotz ' stranger ' ; Sardinian golostiu and Basque gorosti ' holly ' ; Gallurese (Corso-Sardinian) zerru ' pig ' (with z for [dz] ) and Basque zerri (with z for [s] ). Genetic data have found

1296-641: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Sardinian language Sardinian or Sard ( endonym : sardu [ˈsaɾdu] , limba sarda , Logudorese : [ˈlimba ˈzaɾda] Sardinian : [ˈlimba ˈzaɾða] (Nuorese), or lìngua sarda , Campidanese : [ˈliŋɡwa ˈzaɾda] ) is a Romance language spoken by the Sardinians on the Western Mediterranean island of Sardinia . Many Romance linguists consider it, together with Italian , as

1377-417: Is equal to the Sardinians' own force ' ). Dante Alighieri wrote in his 1302–05 essay De vulgari eloquentia that Sardinians were strictly speaking not Italians ( Latii ), even though they appeared superficially similar to them, and they did not speak anything close to a Neo-Latin language of their own ( lingua vulgaris ), but resorted to aping straightforward Latin instead. Dante's view on

1458-744: Is still a Catalan-speaking enclave on Sardinia to this day. Nevertheless, the Sardinian language did not disappear from official use: the Catalan juridical tradition in the cities coexisted with that of the Sardinians, marked in 1421 by the Parliamentary extension of the Arborean Carta de Logu to the feudal areas during the Reign of King Alfonso the Magnanimous . Fara, in the same first modern monograph dedicated to Sardinia, reported

1539-407: Is the proper name of the object in question, the object of onomastic study. Scholars studying onomastics are called onomasticians . Onomastics has applications in data mining , with applications such as named-entity recognition , or recognition of the origin of names. It is a popular approach in historical research, where it can be used to identify ethnic minorities within populations and for

1620-695: The Basques to be close to the Sardinians . Since the Neolithic period, some degree of variance across the island's regions is also attested. The Arzachena culture , for instance, suggests a link between the northernmost Sardinian region ( Gallura ) and southern Corsica that finds further confirmation in the Natural History by Pliny the Elder . There are also some stylistic differences across Northern and Southern Nuragic Sardinia, which may indicate

1701-612: The Genoese too started carving their own sphere of influence in northern Sardinia, both through the mixed Sardinian-Genoese nobility of Sassari and the members of the Doria family. A certain range of dialectal variation is then noted. A special position was occupied by the Judicate of Arborea , the last Sardinian kingdom to fall to foreign powers, in which a transitional dialect was spoken, that of Middle Sardinian. The Carta de Logu of

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1782-640: The Iberian and the Italian peninsula . In the eighth and seventh centuries, the Phoenicians began to develop permanent settlements, politically arranged as city-states in similar fashion to the Lebanese coastal areas. It did not take long before they started gravitating around the Carthaginian sphere of influence, whose level of prosperity spurred Carthage to send a series of expeditionary forces to

1863-770: The Italian-American linguist Mario Pei , analyzing the degree to which six Romance languages diverged from Vulgar Latin with respect to their accent vocalization, yielded the following measurements of divergence (with higher percentages indicating greater divergence from the stressed vowels of Vulgar Latin): Sardinian 8%, Italian 12%, Spanish 20%, Romanian 23.5%, Occitan 25%, Portuguese 31%, and French 44%. The study emphasized, however, that it represented only "a very elementary, incomplete and tentative demonstration" of how statistical methods could measure linguistic change, assigned "frankly arbitrary" point values to various types of change, and did not compare languages in

1944-655: The Nuragic language (s). Etruscan elements, formerly thought to have originated in Latin, would indicate a connection between the ancient Sardinian culture and the Etruscans. According to Pittau, the Etruscan and Nuragic language(s) are descended from Lydian (and therefore Indo-European ) as a consequence of contact with Etruscans and other Tyrrhenians from Sardis as described by Herodotus . Although Pittau suggests that

2025-599: The Serbo-Croatian and the Albanian that are spoken in various Calabrian and Sicilian villages. The question, however, takes on a different nature when considered from a linguistic perspective. Sardinian cannot be said to be closely related to any dialect of mainland Italy; it is an archaic Romance tongue with its own distinctive characteristics, which can be seen in its rather unique vocabulary as well as its morphology and syntax, which differ radically from those of

2106-782: The Sherden , one of the Sea Peoples . Other sources trace instead the root s(a)rd from Σαρδώ , a legendary woman from the Anatolian Kingdom of Lydia , or from the Libyan mythological figure of the Sardus Pater Babai ("Sardinian Father" or "Father of the Sardinians"). In 1984, Massimo Pittau claimed to have found the etymology of many Latin words in the Etruscan language , after comparing it with

2187-851: The 1080 "Logudorese Privilege", the 1089 Torchitorius' Donation (in the Marseille archives), the 1190–1206 Marsellaise Chart (in Campidanese Sardinian) and an 1173 communication between the Bishop Bernardo of Civita and Benedetto, who oversaw the Opera del Duomo in Pisa. The Statutes of Sassari (1316) and Castelgenovese ( c.  1334 ) are written in Logudorese Sardinian. The first chronicle in lingua sive ydiomate sardo , called Condagues de Sardina ,

2268-512: The 18th century. Finally, from the early 18th century onward, under the Savoyard and contemporary Italian one, following the country's linguistic policies which, to the detriment of Sardinian and the local Catalan, led to diglossia . The original character of the Sardinian language among the Romance idioms has long been known among linguists. After a long strife for the acknowledgement of

2349-487: The Aragonese winners from the brutal conflict would then move on to destroy the pre-existing documentary production of the still living Sardinian Judicate, which was predominantly written in Sardinian language along with other ones the chancery was engaged with, leaving behind their trail only "a few stones" and, overall, a "small group of documents", many of which are in fact still preserved and/or refer to archives outside

2430-684: The Byzantines were fully focused on reconquering southern Italy and Sicily, which had in the meanwhile also fallen to the Muslims , their attention on Sardinia was neglected and communications broke down with Constantinople ; this spurred the former Byzantine province of Sardinia to become progressively more autonomous from the Byzantine oecumene , and eventually attain independence. Pinelli argues that "the Arab conquest of North Africa separated Sardinia from that continent without, however, causing

2511-486: The Italian dialects. As an insular language par excellence, Sardinian is considered the most conservative Romance language , as well as one of the most highly individual within the family; its substratum ( Paleo-Sardinian or Nuragic) has also been researched. In the first written testimonies, dating to the eleventh century, Sardinian appears as a language already distinct from the dialects of Italy. A 1949 study by

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2592-618: The Kingdom of Arborea, one of the first constitutions in history drawn up in 1355–1376 by Marianus IV and the Queen, the ' Lady Judge ' ( judikessa in Sardinian, jutgessa in Catalan, giudicessa in Italian) Eleanor , was written in this transitional variety of Sardinian, and would remain in force until 1827. The Arborean judges' effort to unify the Sardinian dialects were due to their desire to be legitimate rulers of

2673-458: The Romance idioms; George Bossong summarises thus: "be this as it may, from a strictly linguistic point of view there can be no doubt that Sardinian is to be classified as an independent Romance language, or even as an independent branch inside the family, and so it is classed alongside the great national languages like French and Italian in all modern manuals of Romance linguistics". Sardinia's relative isolation from mainland Europe encouraged

2754-438: The Sardinian language with regard to the politically dominant ones did not change until fascism and, most evidently, the 1950s. The origins of ancient Sardinian, also known as Paleo-Sardinian, are currently unknown. Research has attempted to discover obscure, indigenous, pre-Romance roots . The root s(a)rd , indicating many place names as well as the island's people , is reportedly either associated with or originating from

2835-455: The Sardinian rebels latrones mastrucati ( ' thieves with rough wool cloaks ' ) or Afri ( ' Africans ' ) to emphasize Roman superiority over a population mocked as the refuse of Carthage. A number of obscure Nuragic roots remained unchanged, and in many cases Latin accepted the local roots (like nur , presumably cognate of Norax , which makes its appearance in nuraghe , Nurra , Nurri and many other toponyms). Barbagia ,

2916-546: The Sardinians believed they had one single king ' ). The conflict between the two sovereign and warring parties, during which the Aragonese possessions making up the Kingdom of Sardinia were first administratively split into two separate "halves" ( capita ) by Peter IV the Ceremonious in 1355, ended after sixty-seven years with the Iberian victory at Sanluri in 1409 and the renunciation of any succession right signed by William II of Narbonne in 1420. This event marked

2997-568: The Sardinians, however, is proof of how their language had been following its own course in a way which was already unintelligible to non-islanders, and had become, in Wagner's words, an impenetrable "sphinx" to their judgment. Frequently mentioned is a previous 12th-century poem by the troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras , Domna, tant vos ai preiada ("Lady, so much I have endeared you"); Sardinian epitomizes outlandish speech therein, along with non-Romance languages such as German and Berber , with

3078-585: The Tirrenii landed in Sardinia and the Etruscans landed in modern Tuscany , his views are not shared by most Etruscologists. According to Bertoldi and Terracini, Paleo-Sardinian has similarities with the Iberic languages and Siculian ; for example, the suffix - ara in proparoxytones indicated the plural. Terracini proposed the same for suffixes in - /àna/ , - /ànna/ , - /énna/ , - /ònna/ + /r/ +

3159-694: The Vandal presence had "estranged Sardinia from Europe, linking its own destiny to Africa's territorial expanse" in a bond that was to strengthen further "under Byzantine rule, not only because the Roman Empire included the island in the African Exarchate, but also because it developed from there, albeit indirectly, its ethnic community, causing it to acquire many of the African characteristics" that would allow ethnologists and historians to elaborate

3240-512: The Way of Straw ' ) also recurs in the Berber languages . To most Italians Sardinian is unintelligible, reminding them of Spanish, because of the way in which the language is acoustically articulated; characterized as it is by a sharply outlined physiognomy which is displayed from the earliest sources available, it is in fact considered a distinct language, if not an altogether different branch, among

3321-478: The aforementioned Cartas and condaghes . The first document containing Sardinian elements is a 1063 donation to the abbey of Montecassino signed by Barisone I of Torres. Another such document (the so-called Carta Volgare ) comes from the Judicate of Cagliari and was issued by Torchitorio I de Lacon-Gunale in around 1070, written in Sardinian whilst still employing the Greek alphabet . Other documents are

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3402-530: The community's everyday Neo-Latin language, Greek was also spoken by the ruling classes. Some toponyms, such as Jerzu (thought to derive from the Greek khérsos , ' untilled ' ), together with the personal names Mikhaleis , Konstantine and Basilis , demonstrate Greek influence. As the Muslims made their way into North Africa , what remained of the Byzantine possession of the Exarchate of Africa

3483-643: The definitive end of Sardinian independence, whose historical relevance for the island, likened by Francesco C. Casula to "the end of Aztec Mexico ", should be considered "neither triumph nor defeat, but the painful birth of today's Sardinia". Any outbreak of anti-Aragonese rebellion, such as the revolt of Alghero in 1353, that of Uras in 1470 and finally that of Macomer in 1478, celebrated in De bello et interitu marchionis Oristanei , were and would have been systematically neutralised. From that moment, " quedó de todo punto Sardeña por el rey ". Casula believes that

3564-500: The development of a Romance language that preserves traces of its indigenous, pre-Roman language(s). The language is posited to have substratal influences from Paleo-Sardinian , which some scholars have linked to Basque and Etruscan ; comparisons have also been drawn with the Berber languages from North Africa to shed more light on the language(s) spoken in Sardinia prior to its Romanization . Subsequent adstratal influences include Catalan , Spanish, and Italian. The situation of

3645-602: The dignity of Sardinian for official purposes was such that, in the words of Livio Petrucci, a Neo-Latin language had come to be used "at a time when nothing similar can be observed in the Italian peninsula" not only "in the legal field" but also "in any other field of writing". A diplomatic analysis of the earliest Sardinian documents shows that the Judicates provided themselves with chanceries , which employed an indigenous diplomatic model for writing public documents; one of them, dating to 1102, displays text in half-uncial ,

3726-522: The distinctive Latin character of Sardinia to the languoids once spoken by the Christian and Jewish Berbers in North Africa, known as African Romance . Indeed, Sardinian was perceived as rather similar to African Latin when the latter was still in use, giving credit to the theory that vulgar Latin in both Africa and Sardinia displayed a significant wealth of parallelisms. J. N. Adams is of

3807-487: The entire island under a single state ( republica sardisca ' Sardinian Republic ' ); such political goal, after all, was already manifest in 1164, when the Arborean Judge Barison ordered his great seal to be made with the writings Baresonus Dei Gratia Rei Sardiniee ( ' Barison, by the grace of God, King of Sardinia ' ) and Est vis Sardorum pariter regnum Populorum ( ' The people's rule

3888-454: The existence of a Sardinian Koine which pointed to a model based on Logudorese. According to Eduardo Blasco Ferrer , it was in the wake of the fall of the Judicates of Cagliari and Gallura , in the second half of the 13th century, that Sardinian began to fragment into its modern dialects, undergoing some Tuscanization under the rule of the Republic of Pisa ; it did not take long before

3969-429: The existence of two other tribal groups ( Balares and Ilienses ) mentioned by the same Roman author. According to the archeologist Giovanni Ugas, these tribes may have in fact played a role in shaping the current regional linguistic differences of the island. Around the 10th and 9th century BC, Phoenician merchants were known to have made their presence in Sardinia, which acted as a geographical mediator in between

4050-453: The fact that any official text was written solely in Sardinian from the very beginning and completely excluded Latin, unlike what was happening – and would continue to happen – in France, Italy and Iberia at the same time; Latin, although co-official, was in fact used only in documents concerning external relations in which the Sardinian kings ( judikes , ' judges ' ) engaged. Awareness of

4131-553: The family sphere, is illustrated by the Euromosaic report, in which Sardinian "is in 43rd place in the ranking of the 50 languages taken into consideration and of which were analysed (a) use in the family, (b) cultural reproduction, (c) use in the community, (d) prestige, (e) use in institutions, (f) use in education". As the Sardinians have almost been completely assimilated into the Italian national mores, including in terms of onomastics , and therefore now only happen to keep but

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4212-542: The first century BC. In terms of vocabulary, Sardinian retains an array of peculiar Latin-based forms that are either unfamiliar to, or have altogether disappeared in, the rest of the Romance-speaking world. The number of Latin inscriptions on the island is relatively small and fragmented. Some engraved poems in ancient Greek and Latin (the two most prestigious languages in the Roman Empire ) are seen in

4293-419: The future, being referred to by linguists as the mere substratum of the now-prevailing idiom, i.e. Italian articulated in its own Sardinian-influenced variety , which may come to wholly supplant the islanders' once living native tongue. Now the question arises as to whether Sardinian is to be considered a dialect or a language. Politically speaking, of course, it is one of the many dialects of Italy, just like

4374-476: The indigenous tongue, which is now reduced to the memory of "little more than the language of their grandparents". As the long- to even medium-term future of the Sardinian language looks far from secure in the present circumstances, Martin Harris concluded in 2003 that, assuming the continuation of present trends to language death , it was possible that there would not be a Sardinian language of which to speak in

4455-401: The island's cultural patrimony, in 1997, Sardinian, along with the other languages spoken therein, managed to be recognized by regional law in Sardinia without challenge by the central government. In 1999, Sardinian and eleven other "historical linguistic minorities", i.e. locally indigenous, and not foreign-grown, minority languages of Italy ( minoranze linguistiche storiche , as defined by

4536-541: The island's inhabitants. As a result of this protracted and prolonged process of Romanisation, the modern Sardinian language is today classified as Romance or neo-Latin, with some phonetic features resembling Old Latin . Some linguists assert that modern Sardinian, being part of the Island Romance group, was the first language to split off from Latin, all others evolving from Latin as Continental Romance. In fact, contact with Rome might have ceased from as early as

4617-621: The island. Specifically, the Arborean documents and the palace in which they were kept would be completely set on fire on May 21, 1478, as the viceroy triumphantly entered Oristano after having tamed the aforementioned 1478 rebellion, which threatened the revival of an Arborean identity which had been de jure abolished in 1420 but was still very much alive in popular memory. Thereafter, the ruling class in Sardinia proceeded to adopt Catalan as their primary language. The situation in Cagliari ,

4698-1027: The island; although they were initially repelled by the natives, the North African city vigorously pursued a policy of active imperialism and, by the sixth century, managed to establish its political hegemony and military control over South-Western Sardinia. Punic began to be spoken in the area, and many words entered ancient Sardinian as well. Words like giara 'plateau' (cf. Hebrew yaʿar 'forest, scrub'), g(r)uspinu ' nasturtium ' (from Punic cusmin ), curma ' fringed rue ' (cf. Arabic ḥarmal ' Syrian rue '), mítza 'spring' (cf. Hebrew mitsa , metza 'source, fountainhead'), síntziri ' marsh horsetail ' (from Punic zunzur ' common knotgrass '), tzeúrra 'sprout' (from * zerula , diminutive of Punic zeraʿ 'seed'), tzichirìa ' dill ' (from Punic sikkíria ; cf. Hebrew šēkār 'ale') and tzípiri ' rosemary ' (from Punic zibbir ) are commonly used, especially in

4779-454: The language that is the closest to Latin among all Latin's descendants. However, it has also incorporated elements of Pre-Latin (mostly Paleo-Sardinian and, to a much lesser degree, Punic ) substratum , as well as a Byzantine Greek , Catalan , Castilian , and Italian superstratum . These elements originate in the political history of Sardinia , whose indigenous society experienced for centuries competition and at times conflict with

4860-462: The last century. The Sardinian adult population today primarily uses Italian, and less than 15 percent of the younger generations were reported to have been passed down some residual Sardinian, usually in a deteriorated form described by linguist Roberto Bolognesi as "an ungrammatical slang". The rather fragile and precarious state in which the Sardinian language now finds itself, where its use has been discouraged and consequently reduced even within

4941-533: The latter to rejoin Europe" and that this event "determined a capital turning point for Sardinia, giving rise to a de facto independent national government". Historian Marc Bloch believed that, owing to Sardinia being a country which found itself in "quasi-isolation" from the rest of the continent, the earliest documentary testimonies, written in Sardinian, were much older than those first issued in Italy. Sardinian

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5022-517: The latter, due to the fierce resistance of the Sardinians, were not able to spread to the island, as they had in Africa". Michele Amari , quoted by Pinelli, writes that "the attempts of the Muslims of Africa to conquer Sardinia and Corsica were frustrated by the unconquered valour of the poor and valiant inhabitants of those islands, who saved themselves for two centuries from the yoke of the Arabs". As

5103-562: The legislator) were similarly recognized as such by national law (specifically, Law No. 482/1999). Among these, Sardinian is notable as having, in terms of absolute numbers, the largest community of speakers. Although the Sardinian-speaking community can be said to share "a high level of linguistic awareness", policies eventually fostering language loss and assimilation have considerably affected Sardinian, whose actual speakers have become noticeably reduced in numbers over

5184-419: The lively multilingualism in "one and the same people", i.e. the Sardinians, because of immigration "by Spaniards and Italians" who came to the island to trade with the natives. The long-lasting war and the so-called Black Death had a devastating effect on the island, depopulating large parts of it. People from the neighbouring island of Corsica, which had been already Tuscanised, began to settle en masse in

5265-646: The modern Sardinian varieties of the Campidanese plain , while proceeding northwards the influence is more limited to place names, such as the town of Magomadas , Macumadas in Nuoro or Magumadas in Gesico and Nureci , all of which deriving from the Punic maqom hadash ' new city ' . The Roman domination began in 238 BC, but was often contested by the local Sardinian tribes, who had by then acquired

5346-439: The mountainous central region of the island, derives its name from the Latin Barbaria (a term meaning ' Land of the Barbarians ' , similar in origin to the now antiquated word Barbary ), because its people refused cultural and linguistic assimilation for a long time: 50% of toponyms of central Sardinia, particularly in the territory of Olzai , are actually not related to any known language. According to Terracini, amongst

5427-789: The northern Sardinian coast, leading to the birth of Sassarese and then Gallurese , two Italo-Dalmatian lects. Extract from sa Vitta et sa Morte, et Passione de sanctu Gavinu, Prothu et Januariu (A. Cano, ~1400) O Deus eternu, sempre omnipotente, In s'aiudu meu ti piacat attender, Et dami gratia de poder acabare Su sanctu martiriu, in rima vulgare, 5. De sos sanctos martires tantu gloriosos Et cavaleris de Cristus victoriosos, Sanctu Gavinu, Prothu e Januariu, Contra su demoniu, nostru adversariu, Fortes defensores et bonos advocados, 10. Qui in su Paradisu sunt glorificados De sa corona de sanctu martiriu. Cussos sempre siant in nostru adiutoriu. Amen. Onomastics An alethonym ('true name') or an orthonym ('real name')

5508-412: The opinion that similarities in many words, such as acina ( ' grape ' ), pala ( ' shoulder blade ' ) and spanu(s) (' reddish-brown '), prove that there might have been a fair amount of vocabulary shared between Sardinia and Africa. According to Wagner, it is notable that Sardinian is the only Romance language whose name for the Milky Way ( (b)ía de sa báza, (b)ía de sa bálla , '

5589-461: The orthographic differences between Logudorese and Campidanese Sardinian were beginning to appear, Wagner found in this period "the original unity of the Sardinian language". In agreement with Wagner is Paolo Merci, who found a "broad uniformity" around this period, as were Antonio Sanna and Ignazio Delogu too, for whom it was the islanders' community life that prevented Sardinian from localism. According to Carlo Tagliavini, these earlier documents show

5670-490: The other Rūm nations and are people of purpose and valiant that never leave the arms". According to Wagner, the close relationship in the development of Vulgar Latin between North Africa and Sardinia might not have only derived from ancient ethnic affinities between the two populations, but also from their common political past within the Exarchate of Africa . What literature is left to us from this period primarily consists of legal and administrative documents, besides

5751-402: The regions in Europe that went on to draw their language from Latin, Sardinia has overall preserved the highest proportion of pre-Latin toponyms. Besides the place names, on the island there are still a few names of plants, animals and geological formations directly traceable to the ancient Nuragic era. By the end of the Roman domination, Latin had gradually become however the speech of most of

5832-568: The rest of the Sardinians, i.e. those not residing within the jurisdiction of Arborea ( Sardus de foras ), as well as a widespread impatience with the foreign importation of a feudal regime, specifically " more Italie " and " Cathalonie ", which threatened the survival of deep-rooted indigenous institutions and, far from ensuring the return of the island to a unitary regime, had only introduced there " tot reges quot sunt ville " ( ' as many petty rulers as there are villages ' ), whereas instead " Sardi unum regem se habuisse credebant " ( '

5913-452: The sample with respect to any characteristics or forms of divergence other than stressed vowels, among other caveats. The significant degree to which the Sardinian language has retained its Latin base was also noted by the French geographer Maurice Le Lannou during a research project on the island in 1941. Although its lexical base is mostly of Latin origin, Sardinian nonetheless retains

5994-509: The so-called "Viper's Cave" ( Gruta 'e sa Pibera in Sardinian, Grotta della Vipera in Italian, Cripta Serpentum in Latin), a burial monument built in Caralis ( Cagliari ) by Lucius Cassius Philippus (a Roman who had been exiled to Sardinia) in remembrance of his dead spouse Atilia Pomptilla; we also have some religious works by Eusebius and Saint Lucifer , both from Caralis and in

6075-667: The theory of the Paleo-Sardinians' supposed African origin, now disproved. Casula is convinced that the Vandal domination caused a "clear breaking with the Roman-Latin writing tradition or, at the very least, an appreciable bottleneck" so that the subsequent Byzantine government was able to establish "its own operational institutions" in a "territory disputed between the Greek- and the Latin-speaking world". Despite

6156-466: The troubadour having the lady say " No t'entend plui d'un Todesco / Sardesco o Barbarì " ("I don't understand you more than a German or Sardinian or Berber "); the Tuscan poet Fazio degli Uberti refers to the Sardinians in his poem Dittamondo as " una gente che niuno non-la intende / né essi sanno quel ch'altri pispiglia " ("a people that no one is able to understand / nor do they come to

6237-530: The writing style of whom may be noted the lexicon and perifrastic forms typical of Sardinian (e.g. narrare in place of dicere ; compare with Sardinian nàrrere or nàrri(ri) ' to say ' ). After a period of 80 years under the Vandals , Sardinia would again be part of the Byzantine Empire under the Exarchate of Africa for almost another five centuries. Luigi Pinelli believes that

6318-540: Was noted by Roman authors. Punic continued to be spoken well into the 3rd–4th century AD, as attested by votive inscriptions, and it is thought that the natives from the most interior areas, led by the tribal chief Hospito , joined their brethren in making the switch to Latin around the 7th century AD, through their conversion to Christianity. Cicero , who loathed the Sardinians on the ground of numerous factors, such as their outlandish language, their kinship with Carthage and their refusal to engage with Rome, would call

6399-588: Was only the Balearic Islands and Sardinia . Pinelli believes that this event constituted a fundamental watershed in the historical course of Sardinia, leading to the definitive severance of those previously close cultural ties between Sardinia and the southern shore of the Mediterranean: any previously held commonality shared between Sardinia and Africa "disappeared, like mist in the sun, as a result of North Africa's conquest by Islamic forces, since

6480-527: Was published anonymously in the 13th century, relating the events of the Judicate of Torres . The 1297 feoffment of Sardinia by Pope Boniface VIII led to the creation of the Kingdom of Sardinia : that is, of a state which, although lacking in summa potestas , entered by right as a member in personal union within the broader Mediterranean structure of the Crown of Aragon , a composite state . Thus began

6561-613: Was the first Romance language of all to gain official status, being used by the four Judicates , former Byzantine districts that became independent political entities after the Arab expansion in the Mediterranean had cut off any ties left between the island and Byzantium . The exceptionality of the Sardinian situation, which in this sense constitutes a unique case throughout the Latin-speaking Europe, consists in

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